


Five from One

by Derkish



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst (but Mostly Fluff), Kissing, Married Life, Post-Canon, Romance, Slice of Life, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:54:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28362735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Derkish/pseuds/Derkish
Summary: There are no "love languages," only actions and words. Percy and Vex have mastered them all.
Relationships: Percival "Percy" Fredrickstein Von Musel Klossowski de Rolo III/Vex'ahlia
Comments: 14
Kudos: 72





	Five from One

**Author's Note:**

> 'Tis the season for even more Perc'ahlia! 
> 
> 2020 has been a whole Thing, so I wanted to end the year on a lighter note this holiday season. I tried to write straight-up fluff, but then the first section happened and it just kind of went from there. It's still about 90% romantic nonsense though. It was also supposed to be a five-scene piece showcasing the five so-called "love languages" (gift giving, acts of service, quality time, words of affirmation, and touching), but... it didn't feel right to separate them all. Also, it was very hard to keep it to just seven vignettes.
> 
> Rated T for innuendo and not very subtle subtext.

Five from One

Consciousness came on gradually at first, until she remembered the ambush.

Vex’s heart squeezed. She came-to with a rush of panic, reaching for her bow. The abrupt movement and the force of her gasp shot a splintering pain through her chest. Her eyes were blurry. Vex blinked hard, trying to focus. When her vision cleared, she squinted and saw—

A ceiling?

Vex was indoors, looking up at the wooden planks of a weathered ceiling. No ambush on the road. She wasn’t in a covered cart that was slogging its way north through the Alabaster Sierras. It was a room, unfamiliar and plain, just a straw mattress on the ground and a washbasin in one corner. She could see the sunlight barely pushing against the windowsill, too low to spill morning light inside. 

And Percy. Percy on his knees by her head, his face washed out in the pre-dawn greyness. His already rigid posture seemed to stiffen as Vex blinked up at him.

“Tell me it was a dream,” she groaned. Percy shook his head, the slightest movement left, then right, then center. “Where are the children?”

“They’re fine.” His voice had an uncharacteristic roughness to it. “They didn’t see.”

Vex recalled the explosive bang, the cart upended, luggage and passengers toppling over. She had been the first to crawl out and see the party of four encircling them. Bandits out of the forest who no doubt thought they’d apprehended the easy pickings of a nobleman’s cart. Those poor, dumbass fools. Trinket was already on one of them by the time she found Fenthras and started slinging arrows. Which had all gone well, until—

She reached for her waist and felt the crossbow bolt still sticking out, just below the ribcage.

“Ah,” she said, suddenly remembering. “Fuck.”

“I used the potions on the children,” said Percy. “I thought I had one more, but it… the vial had shattered…”

“S’alright… can we just—?”

Vex made a feeble gesture toward the bolt that she assumed was incomprehensible, but Percy nodded. He leaned forward, jaw set. As he closed his hand over the bolt, she noticed something wrong with his hand. She didn’t have time to think on it.

“Get ready.”

Vex nodded, huffing in a few quick breaths to steel herself before Percy jerked his arm in one resolute motion. It had been a while since she felt something like this. The bolt ripping backwards out of her midsection hurt far worse than the initial hit in the fight. The agony simultaneously paralyzed her and forced her spine to arch and recoil in a contorted motion. Vex feared for an instant that she might pass out again, which would almost certainly mean the end. Yet amidst the cursing and panting, she somehow managed to spit out the arcane words, move her hands in the somatic gesture, and clap down over the wound.

In an instant, it was gone, and so was the pain. The room spun again. Vex fell back on the straw, exhausted but relieved.

She heard the bolt thud against the wood floor as Percy dropped it. He was quiet, which she knew to be more dangerous than the alternative. She glanced up to see him still kneeling there. He gripped his knees, the knuckles of his right hand red and shiny with blood. She wondered how the bandits must look.

Silently, Vex studied his hands. She knew them intimately—had watched them work for countless hours on countless projects, benevolent or otherwise. Had studied them while he slept. She knew their every feature, from the soft center of the palm to the rough tips of his fingers, where oil and black powder lingered like the faintest tattoos.

She pictured his hands retrieving their babies from the rubble of a busted-up cart, pulling the corks from healing potions and tipping the contents into little mouths. Wiping tears and smudging dirt from their children’s faces.

Vex reached out, uttered the incantation again, and touched the back of his hand. The wound closed.

Percy made a sound that could have passed for a laugh or a whimper. He bent at the waist, leaning forward until his head came to rest at the soft spot just below her collarbone. The weight on her chest came as an incomprehensible comfort.

“That was… not good,” he said, muffled with his face buried in her shirt. “Let’s not do that again.”

“No,” Vex agreed.

Percy inhaled deep and paused with his lungs full, bracing himself. “I want to say something horrible and selfish.”

“Well, now I think you have to.”

He let the breath out, slowly. “Of the two of us, I’m glad to be the human.”

Her having a half-elven lifespan hadn’t stopped him from watching her die several times before (and almost again today, apparently), but the sentiment struck her nonetheless. Vex coursed her fingers through his hair and pressed her cheek to the top of his head. “I love you, but that _is_ selfish.”

* * *

Percy found Vex more or less where he expected to at a moment like this: sunk up to her neck in the claw foot tub, with an open bottle of champagne dangling from one hand. Sulking. 

“I’ve come to check your pulse,” he said lightly.

Vex hadn’t bothered to light any of the candles, but their room at the inn was on the second story, at a level with the festival lamps outside the window. She was staring in that direction, though Percy doubted she was looking at the fascinating way the lamplight reflected off the glass.

Her gown was on the floor in a heap, which, again—more or less where he’d expected it to end up tonight (though not quite in the same manner). Around the base of the tub, he spotted at least five more bottles of fancy champagne. They all lay on their sides, empty. It was an impossible amount for most anyone to drink on their own, much less a half-elf whose tolerance was about five years out of practice.

“What’s all this?” he asked, venturing a step inside. “Have you gone and hosted a ball away from the ball, without inviting me?”

In response, Vex raised the bottle she’d been holding, took a swing, and dumped the rest into the tub. “Daddy’s footing the bill for all the guests, because he’s _such_ a generous host,” she slurred.

“I see.”

“Why’s he got to ruin everything?” she went on, as Percy pulled a chair up alongside the tub and sat down, rolling up his sleeves. “One speech is all I ask. One speech without a fucking comment that makes me want to punch his dumb fucking face. One!” 

Vex held her index finger in his face as if her point hadn’t been abundantly clear. Her dark eyes met his, but they were unfocused, faraway off somewhere with her sobriety. They were a little dewy, too, even if the tears hadn’t dared to fall. 

Percy rested his elbows on the rim of the tub and took her hand in both of his, folding it between them. “I’m sorry, Vex. He’s an elf, and a politician besides. I don’t think he can be saved.”

“He makes it so hard to be civil sometimes. But I couldn’t even… call him out, or—or interrupt his stupid speech or whatever. It’d just ruin all my hard work. Goddamn gala took _weeks_ to plan, and all those invitations… fuck me, right?”

That was Vex, the indomitable. Smile right through an underhanded comment, then run off and take a conciliatory bath full of fancy wine on someone else’s tab (the steam told Percy there was at least some water in there, too). Anything to avoid upsetting the loose brand of mutual respect she and her father had curated over the years. Percy, on the other hand, was far pettier.

“I… did a thing,” he said. 

Vex looked at him warily, too familiar with that tone to recognize it as anything other than a confession. “What kind of thing?”

“I cashed in on that favor Scanlan owed me.”

“I thought you were saving that for something big.”

Vex wasn’t wrong. He had lorded over it for close to two years, threatening Scanlan to call it in at the opportune moment. Percy shrugged. The bathwater ran down his forearms to soak the white sleeves of his linen shirt, but he kept hold of her hand, touching the backs of her fingers to his mouth.

“Your father’s speech,” he began. “I couldn’t very well change what he said, or what people heard. And I knew you would rather I not get involved.”

“What did you do?” she pressed.

“Scanlan had a little chat with him after you left. And, well... everyone else might remember what an overconfident, pompous ass he sounded like tonight, but Syldor will always remember it as the speech where he shit his pants.”

“ _What?_ ”

Vex tried to sit up in the tub, which only made her slip down further. Her head went under as she was halfway through an expletive. Sudsy bathwater smelling faintly of alcohol overflowed over the edge, spilling onto the marble floor and Percy’s lap. Instinctively, he reached in up to the elbows to pull her out, but she resurfaced before he could grab her. 

“Just a little bit,” he assured her over the sound of her coughing, which was quickly turning into a laugh.

Percy was laughing, too, now, but he stopped when Vex took him full on by the collar and kissed him. A very damp, very giggly (at least on her part), sloppy sort of kiss. He had to gently pry her fingers from his lapel to break it off.

“It was trite, but very effective,” he said, a bit out of breath. 

“That’s a lovely little gift,” Vex said, still smiling at him. “Won’t you give me another and kiss me again?”

As if she didn’t already deserve to be smothered in kisses, every inch of her.

“Maybe tomorrow. You, my dear, are thoroughly schnookered.” When she scrunched her face at his rejection, Percy ducked his head to plant a chaste kiss on her pouty lips. “There you are, as requested.” He stood, flicking water from his hands. “Now where on earth has your robe got off to?”

* * *

“Was that thunder?”

Percy sat up so fast that Vex almost toppled backwards off of him. She would have, if he hadn’t caught her around the middle.

“In a blizzard?” she said. “Is that a thing?”

Another clap—even louder this time, directly overhead—shook the whole inn, right down to the baseboard. They both flinched at the unexpected sound, then stifled sheepish laughter at the way their arms had reflexively tightened around each other.

“Thundersnow,” Percy confirmed. “It’s quite rare. We used to get it every few years in Whitestone when there’s a real blizzard, but you don’t hear it much in the castle…”

Percy leaned back from Vex just enough to swipe at the condensation on the window, their bodies pulling apart with the resistance of thin sweat. Vex took the moment to catch her breath. She would have been annoyed at his being so distractible, except that a pause wouldn’t hurt just now. And she liked the way he looked then, lit from one side by the yellow-gold of a candle, all wide-eyed with studious interest. She watched him push his glasses up his forehead so he could cup his eyes around the windowpane and squint into the dark.

“It’s really going out there,” he said.

“A rare storm on a trip to a rare library, for rare books in a rare language,” she said, playfully mysterious. “What kind of omen do you think that is?”

“Oh, the best kind.”

“Is it just the books that are in celestial, by the way?” Vex reached up through the small space to touch his shoulder, drawing him back from the window. “Or will all the archivists be talking at me in celestial, too?”

Percy turned back to her and seemed to remember himself. He fixed his glasses before his hands returned back to her hips, his fingers pleasantly chilled from the glass. “I don’t know, honestly. But your celestial is quite good these days… certainly enough to find your way around a library.” 

“You think?”

Vex had been practicing just for this trip. She straightened her back in mock attentiveness, tossing her hair over her shoulder where she could feel it trailing down her back. She turned her eyes to address the fictitious person on the wall behind him, but in her periphery, she was pleased to see she had Percy’s undivided attention. Not that she didn’t know that already.

She cleared her throat and said, in celestial, “ _Excuse me sir, could you please direct me to the section on language arts?”_

“ _The language arts_ ,” Percy corrected, a hint different than how she’d said it. “It’s a rising tone, not a falling tone. You just asked if I could direct you to the section on the ‘lingual’ arts.”

“Same difference, right?”

“Not exactly. In celestial, ‘language arts’ refers to languages, composition, and literature like it does in common. Whereas ‘lingual’ just means ‘tongue,’ like the body part. It’s narrower.” 

Percy touched her face and she leaned into his hand, one corner of her mouth sliding into a smirk as his thumb traced the bow of her lips.

“One more time,” he said.

Vex sensed he didn’t have as much interest in the celestial lesson at the moment as he did in hearing her speak it. What could she do under the circumstances but appease him? He’d asked so politely, and the slight sheen of sweat gave him such a pretty glow. She traced a line to the center of his sternum and gently pushed him back down where he’d been before the distraction.

“ _Can you show me more about the lingual arts?_ ”

Percy shot her a keen look. “Why do I feel like that time it was wrong on purpose?”

“Was it wrong, dear?” Vex said airily. “I was just asking you a question…”

* * *

There was a sound, like a voice and maybe knocking. It was hard to tell with one’s head buried beneath two blankets, a pillow, and possibly also an arm. Percy shifted a little, not knowing whether it got him any closer to untangling himself.

It turned out there was, in fact, an arm draped over him; it tightened around his midsection as Vex stirred.

“What’s that?” came her voice from right behind his ear, though in her sleepy state it sounded more like “ _wussat?_ ”

“Don’t care,” said Percy. There was a major storm out there, thrashing the castle with a roaring wind—what could be so important that they needed to emerge from their bed this early in the morning?

The bothersome noise stopped eventually. Percy was just falling back to sleep when the door to their bedchamber swung open. He actually did pick his head up to look this time, which he regretted immediately when he saw Cassandra standing there, arm aloft in irate triumph. From a distance, he could make out the old lock pick in her hand.

“You are _not_ still in bed at this hour,” Cassandra said in disbelief, though it came out sounding much more like a demand. “I have had the Wildemount emissaries holed up in the tea room for almost an _hour_ waiting for you two!”

A pause, and then Vex’s voice went off in his ear again, much louder this time: “Shit!”

Half of the covers flew aside, and Vex rolled out from under them, stark-naked with her hair hanging over her face. She grabbed her shirt off the ground and pulled it over her head, no time for undergarments. Percy sat up with more confusion than urgency, grabbing his pocket watch from the bedside. Its ornate arms were completely still; beautiful and useless. He’d forgotten to wind it.

He fished last night’s trousers up from the floor and shimmied into them without getting out from under the blanket. If indeed Cass had covered for them, it was the least he could do to spare her the entire display. Once at least partially covered, he shot to his feet and made for the closet, almost tripping himself as he pulled off his old socks while trying to walk. Over in the far corner, Trinket was still dozing, immune to the chaos.

Percy glanced over his shoulder and saw that Cassandra still stood in the doorway, her fingers now pressed to her temples.

“Lord and Lady de Rolo, champions of Whitestone and political captains of the Northern realms,” Cassandra said. “If only the people could know.”

“Cass, can’t you stall them?” Vex huffed as she tugged up her pants.

“I _have_ been stalling them. What do you want me say?”

“I don’t know! Just fucking—tell them I’m sick or—Oh!” Vex threw her hands up as if to catch an idea out of the air. “Just tell them I’m pregnant and I was puking all morning, or something like that. People love that stuff.”

Cass blinked. “Are you pregnant?”

Vex and Percy froze and glanced at each other—she with her belt halfway on (missing two of the loops), he with his shirt still hanging open. Whatever look passed between them was definitely beyond Cassandra’s comprehension, and a little bit beyond Percy’s, but he at least knew what Vex was telling him to say.

“Yes,” they said to Cassandra in unison. From the expression on her face, it was plain she didn’t know whether to believe them. It was, however, at least enough for her to stop looking murderous. 

“I’m not going to tell them that,” Cassandra sighed. “Just be downstairs in five minutes, or you’ll regret it.”

“I regret it already,” said Percy. “Get out!”

The door closed, leaving them to scramble in several more seconds of frantic silence. Once Percy finally looked up from his shirt (he had put the buttons in the wrong hole first and had to redo it), he found Vex fully dressed and tying off what must have been the world’s fastest braid.

“Are you _actually_ pregnant?” he asked, somewhere between amused and bewildered.

“Fuck if I know,” she said, tossing her braid back over her shoulder. “Probably. I think so.”

“Really?”

Vex grabbed his ascot from the foot of the bed and rushed up to him with it, plainly too distracted by the meeting for this conversation.

“Every night,” she began matter-of-factly, though he could plainly hear the suppressed humor in her voice, “I have to climb into bed next to _you_ , completely naked. Who am I to avoid the natural consequences of that?”

Percy said nothing, just watched her deftly loop the ascot around his neck. He swayed a little as she straightened his waistcoat with a tug, smoothing out yesterday’s wrinkles from the silk.

Her eyes flicked up to meet his. “What?”

“I wonder…” he began, still formulating the thought, “if you’ll ever reveal that information to me in a normal way.”

The whole thing with Vesper and Keyleth’s foresight spell hadn’t really been Vex’s fault, but he still wasn’t quite over the shock of it being Tary to tell him when Vex was expecting the second time (with the twins, no less. He genuinely had no clue how Tary could have known that). At least he was hearing it out of Vex’s mouth this time, and not from six seconds in the future.

“This is normal, darling. The normal you chose, anyway.” Vex reached up to fluff and then flatten his hair before she took a step back from him and grinned. “There you are, handsome. Not too bad for an old dad.”

“I’m twenty-eight,” Percy said defensively, but Vex had already turned to Trinket, calling out, “Get up, you big traitor! You weren’t supposed to let me sleep in!”

* * *

Vex only saw him because she was already awake.

She wasn’t sleeping well these days, which more or less tracked with how it had been with Vesper and the twins. One night it was a cramp in the leg, another night it might be nausea. Tonight was just regular old insomnia. Vex had been listening to sleet ping against the arched window for hours now. She was making an internal wager about how much (or little) sleep she would get in the next three months when, on the other side of the bed, she heard the sharp sound of a gasp.

Percy sat up with an almost violent energy, like he’d been doused in something cold. She could see him in the darkness, his heavy breathing silhouetted by the last red coals in the fireplace. Vex watched the movement of his chest gradually slow as he took in the quiet safety of their bedchamber.

Percy bowed his head, pressed his palms to his eyes, ran his hands through his hair. Eventually, he slipped back down onto the blankets, facing away from her. Vex listened for the sound of his breath to deepen and slow in the telltale sign of sleep.

She lay there for a long time, waiting, watching the shallow movement of his shoulder blades. When Vex couldn’t stand it any longer, she coughed. Laboriously, as if waking from a deep sleep, she pushed herself upright with both arms and coughed again.

Percy rolled over to look at her.

“S-sorry,” she whispered, stifling a yawn that started off as fake, but then turned real. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Are you alright?” he asked, in a hushed tone that matched hers.

She nodded even though he couldn’t see it. “It’s just… dry in here…”

Vex poured herself a glass from the bedside table and took a swig that she didn’t need. Still, the cool water felt good in her mouth and as it slid down her throat. She drank a second mouthful and sighed. “That’s better. Not sure I’ll ever get back to sleep now, though.”

Without waiting for Percy to answer, Vex shuffled across the gap and flopped down right next to him, almost on his pillow. His arm lifted automatically to let her enter his space, and she accepted the invitation with eager relish.

Vex tucked herself under his chin, pressing herself flush against him. She willed herself between Percy’s body and the part of his mind that she knew would cling to the nightmare hours after it had passed. His skin was still hot, but hers was cool; she placed her hands flat to the base of his spine, a barrier of reality against the persistent dreamland.

“Now that we’re both awake, you’re stuck with me,” Vex teased, draping a leg over his hip as if to trap him in place. He’d never know she really meant to. Then, more serious, she added, “Just a few minutes, is that all right…?”

With her ear to his chest, she heard and felt the tired, gruff reverberation of his voice. “My duty, honor, and privilege,” Percy said dryly. But he had wrapped his arm around her, securing her in place. He sighed with what she could have taken as contentedness if she didn’t know it was relief.

Percy slept, and so did Vex.

* * *

With his head deep inside the flue, Percy didn’t hear the shouts until they were right outside. He had to crane his neck to see past the drop cloth and out the shop window. Vesper came running into view on the other side of the glass, her coat and scarf bedraggled as ever, boots untied with the laces trailing dangerously.

In the gangly movement of an eight-year old, Vesper stutter-stopped outside the Slayer’s Cake. She heaved the door open with two hands and stumbled inside, accompanied by a whirl of snow.

“Dad!” she yelled again, breathless and wiping the tangle of hair from her face as she searched around the shop for him. “Dad, we have an emergency!”

Percy climbed into view. “If this is about the kiln, it’s _supposed_ to be smoking—”

“Momma’s back early from Emon!” she said in a rush. “What’re we gonna do?”

Percy looked around the shop and took in its disastrous state. Dirty rags covered the floor and hung around the brick oven, the door for which lay on the other side of the room.

Vesper looked distraught. She bounced on her toes, wringing her hands. This renovation project had been her idea in the first place (or at least the surprise element of it; he’d meant to replace the old oven with something a little more efficient and eye-catching for months). Percy watched her as she looked back toward the window, clearly expecting Vex to stride up at any moment, spoiling the secret that she and Percy had kept.

“Well,” he ventured, sounding much more confident than he felt, “it’s a good thing we’re just about done, isn’t it?”

He tossed her one of the smocks from the pile. “Let’s get the new door on the oven first. If I hold it up, can you slide the pins in?”

Vesper nodded, already jogging over. His little confidante. And a better apprentice than any of his _actual_ apprentices three times her age. Percy could have cried when she pulled a pair of leather work gloves from the pocket of her coat.

By the time Vex found them, Percy had crammed the ladders and the drop cloths into the closet, swept the floors, and set Vesper up at the counter with a bowl of ingredients that he assumed were the right ones to make something edible. He made a great show of looking nonchalant when Vex came into the shop.

“What’s all this, you two?”

Vex looked from Percy—seated at one of the two round dine-in tables as if he had just finished a casual lunch—to Vesper, arms sticky up to the elbow with pastry dough.

“Look!” Vesper cried, brandishing her spoon at the new oven with a puff of flour. “Isn’t it pretty? We made it for you!”

“Did you really?” said Vex, sounding more genuinely surprised than Percy would have guessed.

“Really-really!” Vesper said. With his back to her, Percy couldn’t see her proud grin, but he could practically feel it. “Want me to show you how it works?”

“I wish you would. Where’s my apron?”

“It’s right here, momma. Don’t worry, I kept it clean…”

Vex swung by Percy’s seat on her way across the room. He tilted his face to one side at the same time that she bent to kiss his cheek. The years-old ritual, a gift for a gift. The soft pang in his chest still always got him, somehow.

“Thank you, darling,” she whispered in his ear.

“Mmm,” Percy answered. “What for?”

* * *

Vex hadn’t thought that management at Dalen’s Closet would ever let an affiliate of Vox Machina set foot in their venue ever again, but for the right price, it turned out even the sharpest eye could look the other way for a night. It had been worth the gold. The five children (not “children” so much anymore, but _their_ children) had picked the location. Vex hadn’t decided whether their taste in venues was purposefully ironic.

Tonight had all the right people in the right place, with the right amount of food and drink. It had been one toast after the next. Speeches that dissolved into applause and heckling. Fireflies flitting in and out of the grand party tents as dusk arrived, commingling with the candles in the centerpieces. Vex had spent the evening with a glass of champagne in her hand and Percy on her arm. Entertaining came naturally to them after however many years of galas, political events, weddings, whatever else. They played off of each other, all smiles, laughing often.

It was easy when, like tonight, there was something to celebrate: their youngest had finally come of age. All five now fully grown, healthy and successful in their own ways. Vex could drink to that. And then some.

As for Percy, he hadn’t left her side all day—or maybe she couldn’t stand to leave his. Something had settled between them over the last several hours that Vex couldn’t quite name. Whatever it was, she felt it profoundly as they stood at one end of the tent and watched the party carry on, guests dancing and drinking, a few of them singing along with the band. The feeling led them to duck out of sight and wander out from the furthest reach of the glowing lanterns, wordlessly, arms brushing now and again as they trekked across the sand.

Before long, they had reached the bay. The sea was calm tonight, the waves hardly breaking as they touched down on shore. Above, the sky shone clear and bright with stars. If Vex squinted, she could just barely make out the sharp line of a cliff in the distance.

She turned her back to it and stepped out of her shoes. Percy watched her untie the laces of her gown, pull it over her head, and toss it aside before he started on the buttons of his dinner jacket. They waded in together, and the warm water seeped into their underclothes a little more with every step. In the background, the distant party sounds carried over the water, blurred together.

“I think that went pretty well, didn’t it?” said Percy, stretching. He cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders like he was shaking the rigid, formal posture out of his system.

Vex beamed. “I’d say so. Good moods all around. The food was above average. And minimal squabbling.”

“That’s right,” Percy said thoughtfully. “I saw Grog shaking down that one waiter, but I think that was the only bona fide incident, and it hardly counts.”

“Just the one potential squabble, then?”

“I think it was just the one.”

“That’s pretty good.”

“ _Very_ good.”

As a wave rolled past, Percy leaned backwards into it until it took his legs out from under him. Vex followed, diving into the next swell, twirling once below to experience the free motion, like flying. The pressure in her ears broke as she hit the air again. She swam back through the shallow water to Percy, where they floated, heads bobbing at the surface.

“Well,” Percy said conclusively, after a long moment of quiet. “Our evolutionary work is done. What’s our next move?”

Vex had very deliberately not considered it. If she had her way, nothing much would change at all—it wasn’t like they’d been chasing toddlers around recently. And their respective roles on the Whitestone and Tal’dorei councils wouldn’t change at all. But still, there was something in his question that Vex didn’t like, so she said, “Fuck off into the woods for a while?”

“You do that plenty already,” said Percy.

She splashed him, but he must have known she was going to, because he caught her by the wrist with a triumphant “Ha!” when she did it. Vex scoffed, but she didn’t resist when he pulled her in. Instead, she sat herself lightly on his knees, locking her ankles together behind him. His fingers laced together at the small of her back to keep her from drifting off.

“You’re not a _hundred percent_ wrong—” she began, and he kissed her.

It caught her off guard, but not by surprise. Vex froze for half a second before she melted into it, cupping his face in both hands. His mouth was warm against the cool air, and as she deepened the kiss, his quiet hum of content was such a familiar sound that she felt, all at once, that she was home again.

They broke apart when breath demanded it. Vex kissed his cheek, then the line of his jaw, then let her chin fall to his shoulder and hugged him tight. Percy said nothing at first, so neither did Vex. She just waited, arms wrapped around his middle, floating. With Percy anchoring them there, they could stay indefinitely, weightless and close, just out of earshot of the beach. 

Finally, Percy spoke. “Do you remember what I said in that shack, years and years ago? After the incident with the cart?”

Vex scanned her memory until she thought of the crossbow bolt, and Percy’s words as he knelt before her. “Of course.”

“Maybe it’s just this place talking,” he said, sounding almost amused, “but I’ve been thinking about that a lot today. I regret what I said, somewhat.”

“You’ve decided that just now?”

“No. I think I knew it wasn’t strictly true when I said it, but…” Percy chuckled a little, like he was appreciating his younger self’s melodrama. “I’m actually quite jealous. You’ll get to watch them grow old, make choices—mostly good choices, but hopefully some bad choices too.”

As if on cue, the sound of multiple wine glasses shattering on the dance floor echoed out across the water, followed by a lot of whooping and clapping. Vex looked back toward the glowing mass far down the beach that they knew was the party.

She didn’t like to dwell on those kinds of things, and especially not _that_ thing. If she forced it from her mind, she could pretend that life would always stay this way—as close to perfect as one could ask. She could pretend that as the years went on, Percy hadn’t begun to slide gracefully past her in their race against time. They weren’t there yet. Maybe a decade or more would pass before they’d really start to see it.

“It’s strange to watch them grow up, isn’t it?” she said, unwilling to confront the topic any further than that. When she turned back to Percy, she found him looking at her instead of the commotion in the distance.

“Terrifying,” he said. “Time in general is… terrifying. I wake up every morning and can’t believe that this has been my life. How did we end up here?”

“Probably best not to ask,” she said, smirking. “It’s an awfully long story—”

“—novel length—”

“—with lots of awkward parts.”

“I like the awkward parts,” Percy insisted. “That’s where all the fun is.”

“Not _all_ the fun…” Vex winked, as if the implication weren’t obvious. “How about this? For the abridged version, we can chalk it up to the power of my good looks and natural charm.”

They both laughed at that. Percy spun them around once in the water and tipped her backwards momentarily, just enough for her to throw her arms around his neck to keep from falling off. She leaned into him as they straightened up again. He was still looking at her in that way she knew—deeply affectionate, almost reverent.

“Honestly, Vex, it’s…” Percy shook his head, failing to suppress a flustered smile. “It’s almost pitiful, how much I love you. I know I don’t say it as often as I should. It still always seems so surreal. I don’t know that I ever said it once before I met you.”

“Percy, you already tell me every day,” Vex said. She could feel the heat in her face as her chest constricted almost too tight to breathe. “You don’t have to say it to tell me.”

“Yes, that’s true,” Percy conceded, begrudgingly. “But I could stand to say it more. It makes me happy to say it, and for you to hear it. I love you. See? I love the way you look at me when I say it. I love you.”

Percy had edged in a little more with every word. Finally he was close enough, and Vex only had to dip her chin the slightest bit to meet him. She resurfaced from the kiss with her heart in her throat.

Vex opened her mouth to respond, then changed her mind and kissed him again instead. The tide was creeping higher, but neither of them noticed the passing time. They were in deep, at ease, two pulses huddled close together against the night.

**Author's Note:**

> If nothing else, it has been a productive year for me in the de Rolo content department (as of today, about ~114,350 words worth!). It's been a lot of fun, so thank you to everyone who sent me some love along the way.
> 
> And thanks, as always, for reading! <3


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